April 26

April 27

Alliance Party’s leading Indian member quits, believing Fijian
party supporters are destroying the multi-racial character of the party.

May 4

Five buildings, including the Attorney General’s offices, are
petrol-bombed in Lautoka.

May 6

Permission is denied for a rally of government opponents when Parliament
reopens on May 8.

May 10

Fijians of all parties are invited to join a Fiji United Front to give
outnumbered indigenous Fijians a united voice.

May 14

Lieutenant Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka and 10 armed men march into the House
of Representatives, overthrowing the elected, Indian-dominated government
of Prime Minister Bavadra.

September 22

Governor-General brings Bavadra and Mara together to form an interim
bipartisan government.

September 25

Rabuka’s troops stage a second coup and he annuls the 1970 Constitution.

October 7

Rabuka declares Fiji a republic.

October 16

Fiji is thrown out of the Commonwealth.

July 25, 1990

President Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau decrees a new constitution establishing
a bicameral legislature. Great Council of Chiefs appoints senators and
president for a five-year term.

June 2, 1992

Rabuka is sworn in as Prime Minister.

February 28, 1994

Rabuka retains prime ministership in a snap election.

September 1996

A Constitutional Review Commission headed by former NZ Governor-General
Sir Paul Reeves recommends Fiji adopt a non-racially biased constitution,
calling for a return to cross-communal voting. Brij Lal is one member
of a 3 person Commission that produces a report of over 800 pages, written
on the basis of 694 recommendations. The Great Council of Chiefs wholly
endorses the report.

September 30, 1997

Fiji is readmitted to the Commonwealth.

July 27, 1998

New constitution includes cross-communal voting and establishes the
first human rights commission in the South Pacific.

December 1998

Rabuka announces that his ruling Soqosoqo ni Vakavulewa ni Taukei Party
has formed a coalition with the Indian dominated National Federation
Party and the mixed-race United General Party.

May 18, 1999

Fiji’s defeated Prime Minister formally resigns, ending 12 years
in office and making way for an Indian-dominated Government.

Former trade unionist Mahendra Chaudhry is sworn in as Fiji’s
Indo-Fijian Prime Minister after the Labour Party wins the first general
election under the 1997 constitution.

May 2000

The Taukei Movement, an underground political organisation instrumental
in the 1987 coups, stages two anti-government rallies in two weeks.

May 19, 2000

George Speight, the son of a Fijian opposition MP, tries to overthrow
the Government and is committed to revoking the 1997 constitution. The
President, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, declares a state of emergency in the
hope of restoring law and order. Speight declares this ‘illegal’.

July 13, 2000

Hostages are finally released; no one has been killed.

Speight is jailed, and moved to an island off the coast of Suva.
Treason charges (still pending) are laid.

Mahendra Chaudhry embarks on a world tour.

Laisenia Qarase is appointed as the head of an interim Government
with no specific constitutional commitments.

August 8 and October 2000

End, respectively, of the derogation deal agreed in 1999 and the import
credit scheme. [*]

September 14, 2000

Story in the New York Times gives details of George Speight’s
ambitious plans for a Fijian mahogany industry worth approximately $100
million. The Chaudhry government had threatened these plans, favouring
a British company rather than the Americans with whom Speight was associated,
and was accused of “selling out landowner interests to curry favour
with the British and protecting sugar cane farmers.” (Britain could
help with important sugar subsidies, but they wanted Commonwealth Development,
the British Company, to get the timber concession). Speight had meanwhile
been trying to bring together landowners and had positioned himself as
executive of a new land trust. There were major landowner protest marches
against the Chaudhry government in late March and on 19 May, the day
Speight captured the parliament.

November 15, 2000

High court Justice Anthony Gates upholds the 1997 Constitution, calling
for the appointment of a multi-party Government by the ousted President
Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara.

ENDNOTES

* Central to many concessionary trade agreements
such as SPARTECA are the so-called ‘Rules of Origin’ criteria.
These allow various items to be taken into account in estimating what
constitutes ‘local content’. It is necessary to show that
50% of the cost price of goods is ‘local content’; where
this 50% rule is relaxed it is called a ‘derogation’. New
Zealand relented to pressure from Fiji and relaxed to 45%. Australia
also granted a 6% derogation for one year in 1998. [Back]